Certain material processing machines, such as crop harvesters and windrowers, include a rotary crop conveyer which delivers crop from a cutterbar to conditioning elements. Hesitation of the crop or material between the cutting element and conditioning elements in a hay cutting platform results in uneven feeding of crop. This uneven feeding causes crop damage from recut crop with rotary cutterbars. Recut crop forms a dense wad in the resulting windrow that leads to poor local air circulation. This results in localized areas of high moisture within the windrow which results in lower quality bales or forage, often with mold in the wet areas.
Uneven feeding also causes poor conditioning quality and uneven windrows, for both rotary and sickle cutterbars. Because of the uneven feeding, the conditioner sees large clumps of crop followed by thin mats. This results in non-uniform conditioning of the crop and bunchy windrows. The resulting windrow does not dry uniformly, leading to a reduction in hay or forage quality. Uneven windrows also make it difficult for the following machine to process the windrow. This is especially true in the case of forage harvesters which have a noticeable decrease in capacity in uneven windrows.
In some cases it is desirable to run an auger at a different tip speed than the conditioner. In cases where the conditioner tip speed runs faster than the auger tip speed, the conditioner can grab crop and pull it across the slower moving flight or paddle causing damage to the crop. It is desired to provide an aggressive rotating crop conveying element to prevent crop hesitation and to thereby reduce crop damage and uneven feeding.